In many industrial applications wherein sliding motions between metal-to-metal contact cannot be avoided, methods to reduce the friction and wear of the metal surfaces are highly desirable. These applications are frequently encountered in the automotive industry and in the electronics industry. For instance, in the automotive industry, engine friction and wear reduction by using additives in lubricants is one of the most frequently used approaches. Additives used in lubricants to reduce friction and wear achieve its purpose by creating chemical reactions between the additives and the metal surfaces. However, these chemical reactions are very slow and the reaction films thus formed are generally not uniform. In electronic applications such as that of a switching device, it is difficult to reduce the dry friction and wear problems between metal surfaces since no lubricants can be used to reduce such friction.
The frictional characteristics of surface coatings are controlled by their chemical compositions and their microstructures such as crystallinity and grain size distribution. In many advanced mechanical or electronic systems, materials need to operate in harsh environments and under severe frictional conditions.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide a method of coating iron surfaces with a friction-reducing and wear-resistant silver/molybdenum coating material.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method of coating iron surfaces with a silver/molybdenum coating material by simultaneously co-depositing quantities of silver and molybdenum on iron surfaces.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a method of coating iron surfaces with a silver/molybdenum friction-reducing and wear-resistant coating material by simultaneously co-depositing quantities of silver and molybdenum in a nano-crystalline binary mixture on iron surfaces by electron-beam evaporation technique.